Toys In The Attic
by Carole C
Summary: A child goes missing in the night out of a locked, second-story room. Then another child disappears, and another. In every case, something else has mysteriously vanished along with the children: an antique rocking horse. The same rocking horse. Sam and Dean vow to find and destroy the evil toy before it can abduct another child, but the trail is almost a hundred years long.
1. Chapter 1

**_THEN:_**

**_Goldwood, PA_**

The wind threw raindrops hard as pebbles against the tall French doors. Ethan sat up with a gasp, covers held up close under his chin. He stared out the windows at the thrashing tree, the security light outside making shadows fall across his face like a witch's fingers.

Ethan whimpered, almost yelled for Daddy. But if he yelled for his Daddy, his Mommy would hear too, and she got awful mad at him for getting up once he was supposed to be asleep.

Another gust of rain hit the windows, louder this time, the raindrops mixed with hail. Ethan squeaked and jumped out of bed, away from the window and the ugly shadows. He backed up until he bumped into Ace's nose.

"I'm not scared," he told the rocking horse. "Are you scared?"

The horse swayed on its rockers, seeming to nod.

"Don' be scared. There's nothin' in the dark that ain't there in the light. That's what Mommy says." Ethan threw his arms around the wooden neck and hid his face against the thick, musty horsehair of Ace's mane as another gust of wind shook the windows.

Ace's chin rubbed against his shoulder. Ethan looked up into a glinting amber glass eye. "Wanna go for a ride, Ace? Then you won't be scared!"

The rocking horse swayed twice. Ethan pulled his step-stool closer to the rocker bow. He held onto Ace's saddle, and put his foot up into the stirrup, just like Daddy showed him. Ethan grinned as he settled himself into the saddle and lifted Ace's reins. "Giddy-up, Ace! Let's go to Texas!"

The horse began to sway as Ethan leaned forward and back. Slow at first, then faster and faster until the rounded ends of the rockers drummed against the floor _bangbang bangbang bangbangbangbangbangbang_.

Ethan laughed and bounced his heels against Ace's wooden sides. "Faster! Faster!"

The French doors blew open with a bang all their own. Hailstones rattled across the floor with a noise like tiny hoof beats.

-oOo-

Gwen groaned and glanced up at the noisy ceiling. "Charlie, what's he up to _now?_"

Her husband patted her thigh. "I'll go check on him."

"You're too lenient," Gwen sighed. "He knows he can give you the big eyes and poochy lip and you'll pat him on the head and let him up for another half-hour."

"He's only five, baby," Charlie chuckled. "He's hardly got a crushing class schedule in kindergarten."

"You're not the one who has to get him up and ready in time to catch the bus," she grumbled.

"Ok, we'll present a united front," Charlie smiled as he took her hand and playfully hauled her up off the sofa.

"Geez, I'm going to have to pad the ends of those rockers!" he said as the noise level only increased as they went up the stairs.

"The floor's already ruined by that monstrosity, why bother?"

They paused on the landing, when all went quiet and still again. "He heard us coming," Charlie whispered, and Gwen stifled a giggle.

He pushed open the door to his son's room. "Ethan? You know you're not supposed to ride Ace without one of—"

Charlie's admonishment ended in a gasp. The rocking horse was gone. Ethan's bed was empty. He slapped on the light. "Ethan?

Gwen ran around to the other side of the small bed. "Ethan?"

She dropped to her knees to look under it. Nothing was there but a half-transformed Transformer.

"Ethan? Come out this minute!" Charlie called, his voice stern as he opened the closet door.

"Ethan!"

"ETHAN!"

**_NOW:_**

**_Steubenville, OH_**

Dean unfolded the morning paper he'd taken from the rack by the diner's door. "Oh man, not another one," he groaned.

"Another what?" Sam glanced up from his laptop.

"Missing kid," Dean answered, scanning the story.

"Probably a custody kidnapping," Sam grimaced, eyes back on the screen. "Happens all the time.

"Yeah, that's bad enough, but I hope that's all it is," Dean mumbled, scanning the story as he spoke. He straightened.

Sam looked up again. "What?"

"Five year old kid disappears out of a second-floor room, with all the windows and doors locked. Parents were downstairs, swears he'd have gone by them if he snuck out." Dean handed him the newspaper.

"Huh. That is odd." Sam read the story quickly. "So's this. The only thing out of place is a missing rocking horse."

"Who the hell would snatch a kid _and_ their rocking horse?"

"Could be a smoke-screen for a murder," Sam shrugged and handed the paper back. "That happens almost as often as custody grabs."

"You're a golden ray of sunshine this morning, Sammy."

The waitress stepped up with their food, so Dean laid the paper aside, Sam tucked his computer back into his bag, and all conversation was shelved for the next several minutes. Halfway through his waffles, Dean dropped his fork and dove across the table to snatch up Sam's messenger bag.

Sam barely got his omelet out of the way in time to keep Dean's chest out of it. "What the heck's gotten into you?"

Dean hauled the messenger bag across the table, then stuffed his mouth with most of a waffle in one bite. "Thought of somethin', wanna check it out," he mumbled around it, and shoved his plate aside.

That certainly got Sam's attention. "Thought of what?"

Dean pulled Sam's laptop out and waved a hand as if Sam's question was a circling fly. "Hang on. Eat your eggs before they get cold."

"What are you searching for?" Sam pulled his phone out of his pocket. "I'll look too."

"Kids who went missing along with their rocking horses."

Sam keyed it in, even as his eyebrows rose. "You're kidding. It's happened before?"

"Yeah, at least once. In the teens or twenties, I think." Dean tapped at the keyboard. "I remember reading about it, dang, back in junior high, I think. One of those books about unsolved crimes, like the Black Dahlia murder and Hoffa. Whoa…. "

"Yeah." Sam squinted at his phone, scrolled down the page. "That many?"

"Looks like it. Four in the twenties and early thirties. One in the late forties. Nothing in the fifties. Two in 1967, one case in 1985. Then nothing till little Ethan Bruner last night."

"There's no pattern to it, on first glance anyway," Sam said.

"Other than kids and rocking horses, no," Dean agreed.

"Not all in the same city either, or even the same county," Sam mused, scrolling through the pages again.

"But not spread out across the country, either. All of 'em were inPennsylvania. The first four in Goldwood, just like the last one." Dean closed the laptop and slid it into the bag.

Sam dropped his phone into his pocket and reached for his computer bag. "Angus and Young, or Tyler and Perry?"

"Tyler and Perry." Dean said as he headed for the door. "Walk this way."

Sam chuckled, swung the bag onto his shoulder and did.

-oOo-

**_Goldwood, PA_**

"Uh oh," Sam muttered as they pulled up to the curb to see two other men wearing generic dark suits get out of a Ford sedan that was as generically nondescript.

"Damn, that's quick. Usually takes the Feds longer to get in gear." Dean checked his pockets and got out too. They needed to blow off these mooks before the real Agents got to the door and screwed everything up.

"But this is a child abduction case."

"So?

"They're probably part of a CARD team. Child Abduction Rapid Deployment. The FBI started the program up around 2005."

"Shit. I mean, hooray they're finally doing that, but it makes this hunt more complicated by a power of ten," Dean muttered under his breath as they closed the distance to the other "agents."

"If they're from Phillie, we're from Pittsburgh," Sam whispered out of the side of his mouth.

"Gotcha. You lead," Dean breathed and then they both put on their professional game faces.

-oOo-

Scamming the Feds was always stressful enough to cause a major deodorant fail, and these two were more determined to staying on target than most. No wonder, with them specializing in abducted kids and all. You want friggin' human pitbulls on those kinds of cases.

But after a tense few moments of double-teamed assertive Winchesterbullcrap, the real agents were convinced to put in a call to the Philadelphia FBI Field Office; aka Bobby's kitchen. Fate decided to be a honey instead of a bitch for a change, because Goldwood was damn near precisely equidistant between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Jurisdiction snafus were not unknown, and they'd happened to meet up with two agents who didn't have the number of the real Philadelphia Field Office on speed-dial.

"We can mark Pittsburgh and Philadelphia off our map for a decade or so," Sam commented as they watched the real FBI agents pull away from the curb.

"Me, I vote we stay out of the entire state after this one, for life," Dean replied. "Missing kids and messing with the Feds? That's enough to put us in ugly orange jumpsuits for the rest of our sorry lives."

They went up the walk, and Dean reached for the polished brass knocker on the door. It swung open after the second knock, so fast it almost yanked the knocker out of Dean's hand. The man who opened it looked like nine miles of bad road.

"Charles Bruner?" Sam asked.

"Yes?" the man answered.

"Mr. Bruner, I'm Agent Tyler and this is Agent Perry, FBI," Sam informed him, as he and Dean did their synchronized badge flash. "We'd like to speak to you and your wife about Ethan's disappearance."

"Thank God," the man breathed. "Come in, Agents, please…." He stepped aside and led them into the living room. "The police told us the FBI might get involved because Ethan is so young, but they weren't sure when you'd arrive. Please, sit down."

Charles didn't wait for them to take him up on it. He dropped into a chair as if his knees gave out from under him.

"We try to move quickly in these types of investigations," Sam assured him.

"Is Mrs. Bruner available?" Dean asked. "It might be less upsetting to question you both at the same time."

"We realize how difficult this must be," Sam added.

Bruner's head jerked up and his eyes narrowed. "Do you? Do you have children, Agents?"

"No sir," Sam answered softly. Dean just shook his head.

"Then you have no idea, gentlemen. None." Charles lurched back onto his feet. "I'll go get Gwen."

When he left the room, Dean and Sam exchanged looks. Deception was part of the job description, but at times like this? The job sucked.

A scant couple of minutes later, Charles came back, his arm around a slender woman who looked even more distraught that he did. They sat down, squeezed into the same wide chair, holding hands so tightly their knuckles were white.

"What do you want to know, Agents?" Gwen asked, her voice a hoarse whisper. "We told the police everything."

"They didn't believe us," Charles broke in, his voice tight. "It sounds crazy, but we're not lying—we wouldn't do anything to hurt Ethan!"

"We just want him back," Gwen moaned, her worn voice breaking on a breathy sob.

"I'm sure you do," Sam said in his most soothing tone as he pulled a notepad out of his pocket. "We're here to do all that we can to bring Ethan home."

"Just start at the beginning," Dean urged. "Don't leave anything out, no matter what. Even a bad feeling could be an important clue."

In fits and starts, sometimes talking over one another, sometimes taking turns when the other would break down, the Bruners told the story of Ethan's disappearance. It was surely no comfort to the frantic parents when the recitation was over and they went upstairs to check out Ethan's room, but Sam and Dean exchanged sighs of relief when the bedroom door closed between them and the Bruners.

They combed the room and pretty much came up with zilch. No sulphur, no EMFs, no EVPs, no hex bags, no cold spots. Nothing outside that the local cops missed. Nothing at all but a mood of gloom and dread that followed them right out of the house.

-oOo-

"I dunno, Sammy," Dean said, looking up at the Bruner's house as he got back into the car. "Nothing in there adds up. The windows have safety latches that won't let 'em raise more than a few inches, and the balcony doors are locked with a double-cylinder deadbolt. They said Ethan didn't know where they kept the keys."

He pulled out as Sam frowned down at the photograph in his hands. A little blond boy in glasses and wearing a cowboy hat four sizes too big grinned out at him, perched on an antique rocking horse the size of a large pony. "Even if someone outside picked the lock, how could they have gotten not only Ethan down from the outside, but this freakin' horse, too? The thing must weigh more than a hundred pounds and the Bruners said it was just seconds from the time the noises stopped till they came into his room."

"No tracks of any kind either," Dean said, shaking his head. "Rain could have erased them pretty quick, though."

"Footprints yeah, but somebody would have had to use a ladder, and maybe even a truck to pull this off. That would have torn the heck out of that wet lawn."

"I'm stumped," Dean admitted. "So… we start at the beginning."

"The abductions in the twenties?" Sam asked.

Dean nodded. "The historical society if there is one, or the newspaper morgue. There's gotta be some kind of connection."

"Certainly not a human kidnapper, not over eighty-seven years."

"Nope, but what do we know of that snatches kids and lives that long?" Dean asked.

Sam leaned back, eyes narrowing. "Raw-heads, for one."

Dean shook his head. "Too sophisticated for those bottom-feeders."

"Shifter, maybe?"

"Yeah, could be…." Dean agreed. "But why snatch kids? Shifters tend to go after adults, total identity theft. Where's the advantage in cloning a kid?"

Sam agreed with a nod and a nonverbal grunt. His forehead drew up into tighter pleats. "Are we making the right call, putting the FBI off the trail here?"

"Huh?" Dean pulled to the curb and turned to look at his brother. "What do you mean? Of course we are."

"I'm not so sure," Sam murmured and shook his head. "We're not certain this is anything supernatural. The last case that_might_ be connected to Ethan's snatch is more than twenty years cold. What if this is criminal abduction or child abuse or something? We could be fubarring the investigation so badly that Ethan might never be found."

"It's our kind of deal," Dean assured him. "I feel it in my gut. Besides, it wasn't just that case in '85. There were seven before it."

"Yeah, with ten and twenty years between some of them, too." Sam rubbed a knuckle against his lips.

"We've ganked things before that had longer quiet cycles," Dean pointed out. "Look, I get it. We're dealing with a really cute little kid here. I want to find him alive and in one piece as much as you do. Ethan's more at risk if we walk away from this than if we stick with it—even if it's some pure human molester that's snatched him. You know the Feds are worse than useless taking down anything that's on our menu."

"But we can track and deal with a human monster, just like any other kind," Sam finished for him. "I know that."

"Then why the sudden attack of emo angst?" Dean asked, eyebrow lifting.

"Uncertainty, maybe."

That Sam hadn't reacted with some pissy comeback made Dean feel a little angst himself. "We've walked into some damn hairy situations blind before and made it out ok."

"Yeah, but usually by this point we can put a name to what we're after, even if we don't know how to take it down."

"Nothin' new under the sun, Sammy," Dean shrugged and pulled back onto the street. "Whatever this thing is, it's not freakin' Cthulhu. Someone's fought it before."

"If it was Cthulhu, at least we'd know what we were dealing with," Sam mumbled under his breath.

Dean reached over and turned up Stevie Ray Vaughan. When Sam was in that kind of a funk, might as well save your breath and let the mood rain out on its own.


	2. Chapter 2

They mused on it all the way into the center of town, but were no closer to a conclusion when they pulled up to the County Courthouse, where the Historical Society had their office, than they were when they left the Bruners.

The woman at the Historical Society wasn't about to let them rummage around in her files, regardless of how much tin they flashed at her. So they cooled their heels and drank warmed-over coffee and waited for her to make photocopies.

"This is everything we have on the kidnappings in the twenties and thirties, Agents," she told them as she handed over a manila folder. "Sadly, the cases went cold very quickly, because there were no real clues and never any ransom demands or anything like that. They didn't have the forensics knowledge police do now."

She gave a sheepish half-smile. "Of course, you know that."

"Crime scene investigation has come a long way," Sam smiled as he took the files. "Even we have a hard time keeping up with all the new developments."

"There was never anything found in these cases? No unidentified bodies turned up, or belongings, things like that?" Dean asked.

The woman shook her head. "Not as far as I know. Those cases cast a long shadow over this whole county. Even when I was growing up, my mother wouldn't let me sleep with my bedroom windows open." She sighed. "I pray you catch this horrible person. I can't even imagine how it must feel to have a child simply—vanish—never to be seen again."

"We'll do our best to answer that prayer," Dean assured her. "So the Bruners, at least, won't have to find out how that feels."

-oOo-

As soon as they checked in and did their usual precautionary sweep of their new temporary digs, Dean shed his tie and jacket, tossed them on one of the beds, and tugged his shirt tails out. Sam draped his jacket over one of the dinette chairs, loosened his tie and spread the photocopies out over the scarred table-top.

Dean leaned over them with him and picked up one of the pages that held muddy, grainy copies of old photographs of the long-missing children and the crime scenes. Sam was absorbed in reading the smeary copies of antique newsprint, a frown of concentration creasing his forehead.

"Sam!" he blurted, tapping his brother on the shoulder with the back of his hand. "Look at this!" Dean laid a photocopy down beside the bright, heartbreaking photograph of Ethan. "Notice anything?"

Sam peered at the murky copy. "Is that the same rocking horse?"

"Hard to tell, it's so far in the background and turned away at an angle, but it looks similar to me."

Sam dug in his bag and brought out a magnifying glass. "Look! The carving on the end of the rocker bows, and the pattern of the dappling spots on the horse's hip—"

Dean focused the lens Sam handed over. "Man… I am not believing this." He looked up at Sam. "Cursed object?"

"I've never heard of anything operating like this thing seems to, but yeah. That's the best explanation so far."

Dean tucked his shirt back in. "I say we go ask the Bruners where they got their nag."

-oOo-

Less than an hour later, they were knocking on the door of one Edward Silva. He came to the door blinking like an owl at noon. "Can't 'cha read, y'idiots? Sez DAY SLEEPER on the damn door." He started to slam it.

Sam stuck his size thirteen wingtip over the threshold as he and Dean flipped open their badges. Silva experienced an instantaneous attitude adjustment.

"Oh, hey, I'm sorry, officers," Silva blurted, his words stumbling over one another. "I didn't know you were Feds, y'know? I thought you was some of them Bible-thumpers or somethin'."

"We get that a lot," Sam dead-panned.

"Must be the suits," Dean agreed. "And it's not Officer, it's Agent. Perry," he jabbed a thumb at his chest, and then nodded to Sam, "And Tyler."

Silva nodded through that like one of those dashboard dogs. "Ok, ok, Agents. What can I do for ya?"

"We want to ask you some questions about an object you sold at a recent yard sale," Sam informed him, and pulled Ethan's photo out of his suit pocket. "This rocking horse."

It required no honed powers of deduction to interpret the expression of nervous recognition on Silva's face. "Yeah, sure. I guess it's the same one. Looks like it. See that chip in the ear? I broke the sonuvabitch off when I was hauling it home in my Pinto."

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance at that revelation. Not only did they have a possible cursed object, but Eddie Silva might well be a magical manipulator of space-time if he'd crammed that unwieldy an object into a subcompact Ford hatchback.

"It was a 'wagon," Silva added.

So, mind-reader and inter-dimensional magician?

"When and where did you get the rocking horse, Mr. Silva?" Sam asked.

Silva scratched at a day's growth of grizzled beard. "Lemme think, it was a long time ago. I'd just got that rusted out ol' POS wagon. My first car. Talk about rollin' birth control… anyhow…. Had to be '84, maybe '85? I was cruisin' around late one night, nothin' better to do, and saw the thing sittin' by them dumpsters out on one of the county roads. Y'know how they used to have three or four of 'em set out like that every few miles, before everybody got regular garbage service? I don't know why I even gave the thing a second look, but heck, maybe I was flashin' back to playin' cowboy as a kid, y'know?"

Silva gave them a sheepish grin. "I managed to stuff the thing in the back of the 'wagon. Damn near herniated myself, more than once, between that and gettin' it in the house. I wasn't real keen on movin' the sucker again, so he hung around the living room. Got remarried this year and the new wife, she thought he was ugly and took up way too much room. Guess he did. Anyhow, I dragged him out when she had a yard sale couple of weeks ago. This nice couple, well-off, drivin' a Lexus SUV, they stopped cold-dead in the road and backed up when they seen him. I wasn't too keen on sellin' him, even then, but they didn't turn a hair when I told 'em I wanted two hundred bucks. Just asked me to hold onto him till they could get to the bank and back."

He spread his hands. "That's all I know about it, honest. What's this about?"

"A kidnapping," Dean said. "The child in the photograph. Was he with the couple that day?

Silva blanched. "Oh lord! No, no it was just the man an' woman, 'least that I seen. Look, Agents, I swear that's all I know about that horse. I don't know nothin' about no kidnappin'. I'll take a lie detector test, anything you want. You can talk to my wife, too. She gets off work in a couple hours."

Dean shook his head. "That won't be necessary, Mr. Silva. You're not under suspicion. At this time."

"We have to check out every lead in a case like this, you understand," Sam added with a reassuring smile. "If you think of anything else, please don't hesitate to call."

He handed Silva one of their cards printed with a number that would ring one of the pre-paid cells they kept in the glove box.

"Sure, sure." Silva gave the piece of card a quick glance. "I'll ask Angie about it too, make sure there ain't nothing I forgot."

"You do that," Dean nodded.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Silva."

"Yeah, yeah. Hope you find that little boy safe and sound, real quick." He closed the door on the last word.

Neither of them spoke till they were back on the sidewalk. "You think he was tellin' us the truth?" Dean asked.

"I think if he was any more intimidated, he would have rolled belly up and wet himself, so yeah—he's telling the truth," Sam answered with a wry twist to his lips.

"Maybe that horse was ticked over being sold off like a worn-out futon?" Dean mused as he opened his door.

"Maybe it was something else." Sam hurried back over the sidewalk and up Silva's front steps. He rapped sharply on the door.

Silva poked his head out like a cuckoo from a clock. "Yeah? Didja forget somethin', Agent?"

"One last question," Sam said. "Do you have any children?"

"None I know of," Silva blurted. "Aw hell, I didn't mean that like it come out. Sorry."

"No problem. No children have lived with you while you owned that rocking horse?"

"Nuh uh. Ain't even had a dog, much less kids."

"Thank you, sir. That's all we need to know at this time."

Silva made his escape again, this time locking the door. Sam hustled back down the walk.

Dean straightened from his lean against the Impala. "No kids, huh? That explains the gap between '85 and now. That horse has been cooped up in Fast Eddie's skuzzy living room for a quarter of a century."

"No wonder it's pissed off," Sam muttered. "The smell alone…."

"Yeah, I damn near got a contact high just off what was drifting out the door," Dean chuckled and pulled out.

-oOo-

**_Goldwood, PA_**  
**_Forty-eight hours later…._**

Sam leaned back in the rickety dining chair and rubbed his eyes. "I'm certain," he said, his voice flat, "That I can recite all the police reports from memory."

"Same here." Dean tossed the sheaf of photocopies he'd been studying for the umpteenth time back onto the table. Some slid off onto the floor, but by this point he didn't care enough to retrieve them.

"We know it's the damn rocking horse, we know it's taken Ethan and those other kids, but I can't come up with a single thread to help us unravel the where or how." Sam's voice sharpened with frustrated anger.

"Yeah, and the longer this drags on, the less chance of finding that little boy alive," Dean gritted. "Hell, we don't even know if that horse is still around anywhere. For all we know it can dematerialize between snatches."

"At this point, I'm ready to consider just about any possibility," Sam nodded.

The possibilities were endless, and no way to follow through on any of them. Neither of them felt like saying much the rest of the evening. Dean was finishing off a therapeutic dose of blueberry pie while Sam picked through the last of his salad like he was searching for gold nuggets instead of crumbs of cheese. The TV on the dresser droned with the local news, nothing more than white noise in the background until two words grabbed their attention with magnetic force.

Missing child.

Sam made a dive for the remote, knocking over his chair, and turned the volume up. When the story cut to commercial, Dean flung his fork across the table and swore. The horse had spirited away another kid, a little girl named Sophie this time, barely four.

"Where the heck is Warriors Mark?" Dean scowled.

Sam righted his chair and shoved the debris aside enough for his laptop. "About seventy-eight miles southwest."

Dean cocked his head, speculation in his eyes. "Sam? How fast can the average horse gallop? Assuming this thing is any kind of average."

"Best guess via Google?" Sam said after a few seconds of searching, "Twenty to thirty miles an hour, depending on the size and breed of the horse."

"And the kids, they all disappeared between what, nine at night and six in the morning?"

Sam nodded. "That'd give a range of about a hundred-eighty miles in a night."

"Say two-sixty, two-seventy max, if this thing was galloping top speed all the way. It's wood, it's not gonna need to stop and catch its breath," Dean added.

Sam printed out a map as Dean spoke and they put their heads together over it. "Assuming somewhere here in Goldwood is home base, and the thing makes an express trip every time," Sam murmured as he dotted the map with the locations of all the abductions.

"Then every kidnapping was within a night's run of Goldwood," Dean finished for him.

"Ok Joe, up for a trip to beautiful downtown Warriors Mark?" Sam disconnected his laptop and closed it.

Dean started stripping down as he headed to the closet to grab his suit. "Waitin' on you, Steven."


	3. Chapter 3

Maybe a lot of people would sincerely call Warriors Mark, Pennsylvania beautiful, if those people enjoyed rural scenery, but there wasn't much downtown to it. There wasn't much town to it, down, up or sideways. More like a handful of businesses and houses clustered around the intersection of a pair of two-lane roads, all set in the middle of miles of prosperous farmlands.

Regardless of the aesthetics, the place could have been Venice, Italy and it still wouldn't have gotten a glance in the rearview as they headed back towards Goldwood after a harrowing interrogation of another set of bewildered, distraught parents.

"It put itself beside a thrift-store donation bin this time," Dean gritted. "When I find this friggin' thing, I'm runnin' it through a wood-chipper!"

Sam drummed his fingers on the window ledge, as agitated as Dean but more contained. "After it does—whatever it does—to the kid, it plants itself where it'll be found and taken in by someone else. Like a supernatural package bomb."

"Even worse, it's workin' off blind chance," Dean growled. "I'd bet a few teeth those long quiet gaps were times when someone like Silva found it and it had no access to kids."

Sam shot him a glance of angry commiseration. "There's no external logic to the thing's attacks. Even when it's been active, the abductions don't synch up with moon phases or solstices or any other temporal marker I can come up with."

"So we're as likely to spot this evil piece of horse-shit before it strikes again as its next victim is," Dean said, eyes narrowed. "The Nigerian lottery has better odds."

"Maybe it's not quite that hopeless," Sam offered. "It's still an astronomical long-shot, but we do know its geographical limits, and we know it's centered on Goldwood."

"Hooray. That narrows the potential victim pool down from millions to a few hundred thousand," Dean grumbled.

They were both quiet for several miles; each following their own lines of thought to way too many dead-ends. "What, where, why and who," Sam muttered under his breath.

"Huh?"

"We can't predict where, we have no clue why, and less about who. 'What' is the only investigation route left at this point," Sam elaborated.

"It's a cursed rocking horse, Sam. We've established that beyond doubt."

"But it's a cursed rocking horse that's practically a piece of sculpture. That thing's the size of a carousel horse, and more finely carved than most of them."

"True. It's not some cheap piece of crap Great-Grandpa Fester could have picked up at Ye Olde Kay Marque," Dean conceded.

"Right. That thing had to cost a mint when it was new." Sam turned towards Dean, his voice brightening as his theory gathered steam. "If we can establish some kind of provenance on it, the information may lead us to what's powering its actions."

"If it was a two-tone '58 Plymouth Fury, I could point you straight to the top car guy in the country and tell you myself how to run the VIN back to the factory line it rolled off of," Dean said with a shake of his head. "But some rampaging antique toy? I got nothin'."

"It's way outside my range of expertise, too," Sam agreed, then gave a rueful chuff. "None of our toys cost more than a buck ninety-eight, and we were lucky if they came from somewhere as upscale as K-Mart."

"Hey, I'll have you know I swiped a deluxe set of Legos for your sixth Christmas, right out of FAO Schwarz," Dean informed him.

"Yep, and by Easter you'd lost some of the best pieces down the defrost vents," Sam answered.

"Guilty as charged, but in my defense, they're the only ones that are still around," Dean countered.

"Point taken. So stop bitchin' about the rattling the next time we turn the heat on."

They took the less than scenic route back, scanning every ditch, dumpster, thrift-store bin and back alley they could find as they meandered their way back to Goldwood.

-oOo-

Whenever he could pick up a wi-fi signal, Sam would continue his digital search for someone who could be considered an expert on Victorian toys. By the time they stopped to grab some dinner, they hadn't seen a hair of the damned horse's glued-on hide, but Sam pinned down a dude in Philadelphia who was highly regarded in the toy-collecting field. The man had even written some reference books and been on a few of those appraisal programs. It was far too late to go to his shop by that point, but Sam dug up the guy's phone number and made an appointment to see him first thing in the morning.

"I can't believe some joker has devoted his life to studying old worn-out toys," Dean scoffed as they left the restaurant.

"Eugene Poplin not only has, it sounds as though he's made a comfortable living at it," Sam countered. "A lot of people, some of them very wealthy, collect antique and vintage toys. It's a huge business."

"People will blow their money on the craziest crap," Dean muttered as he got into the car.

"Um, yeah, they will. People every day are throwing wads away on old toys, old whiskey, young women, loud music; all kinds of weird obsessions and fetishes, even forty-year old obsolete cars that get about fifteen miles to the gallon. Insane."

Dean cut his eyes at Sam, who smirked back, unimpressed by the Winchester Glare of Impending Destruction, Patent Pending. Dean ignored him then, and stroked the steering wheel like most people stroke their pet cat, or their lover.

"Should I get out on the next corner, so you two can have some alone time?" Sam teased.

"Classic muscle cars are a sound investment, they're awesome vehicles and they're a huge part of the history of the whole friggin' US of A, so shut it," Dean huffed.

Sam shook his head, grinning, and turned his attention back to scanning the shadowy ditches, back stoops, backyards, trash cans, donation drop boxes and dumpsters along every alley-way and street of the whole friggin' city of Goldwood,Pennsylvania. It was well after midnight before they called off the search and headed back to their room.

-oOo-

**_Philadelphia, PA_**

Late the next morning, Sam and Dean stood on the sidewalk in front of Poplin's Toy Box.

Dean shaded his eyes and peeked in. He drew back in a hurry. "Geez! Do you see the price tag on that train? It's an old beat-up toy, for cripe's sake, not a 427 Chevy power plant!"

"That locomotive's almost two hundred years old, most likely one of the first ever. Probably a bargain for the price," Sam said, peering through the diamond-paned front window at the delicate and colorful toys on display inside the crowded shop. "This place looks straight out of a Dickens' Christmas story."

"It looks like somewhere I'll be worried about my elbows the entire time," Dean said.

"Keep 'em tucked in tight, and look but do not touch," Sam admonished him with a smile as he opened the door.

"I'm not touchin' anything," Dean muttered and followed Sam inside. "In fact, it'll probably be safer if I wait for you out on the sidewalk."

He didn't get a chance to turn and escape, because a round little balding man in a gaudy sweater vest hurried into the front before the bells over the door stopped jingling.

"Good morning, gentlemen!" the man greeted them with a clap of soft, pudgy hands, as if their arrival really had made his day. "Welcome to my Toy Box! How may I help you today?"

"Good morning," Sam smiled at him. "You're Mr. Poplin, I assume?"

It was almost impossible not to smile at the guy. He gave off cheer like strong cologne.

"Poplin the Younger, yes," Poplin nodded with a chortle and extended his hand to them both. "Eugene Poplin, at your service."

Sam shook the man's hand, and showed him his badge. "I'm Agent Tyler. We spoke on the phone last night. This is Agent Perry."

Eugene barely spared a glance at their badges, more interested apparently in beaming up at them as he shook Dean's hand in turn. "I'm pleased to meet you, Agents, though of course, I sincerely wish it was under less tragic circumstances."

His round face drew up in concern. "Obviously, I want to do whatever I may, to aide you in returning these children safely to their homes. You said something about rocking horses being involved somehow?"

Dean lifted an eyebrow. "You haven't heard about the kidnappings in Goldwood and Warriors Mark?"

"No, I haven't." Eugene shook his head. "It's probably a shameful fault to confess, but I actively avoid the news, gentlemen. Far too depressing on the whole, don't you think? I find I always hear of anything I need to know about through my clients."

"We understand that sentiment," Sam assured him, "But this is something you need to know about. Someone may try to pass this particular horse on to you, and it's vital evidence."

"Please, gentlemen, come with me to the back. We can discuss this more comfortably," Eugene offered.

After they were settled in plush chairs with rich coffee, Dean drew out the photo of Ethan on the horse. "Can you tell us anything about this rocking horse, Mr. Poplin?"

"Eugene, please," the man murmured as he took the now battered photo and shook his head, a sad expression on his face. "This child is one of the missing?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so," Sam answered.

"Such a charming little boy. I would be driven absolutely mad if one of my own had been-" Eugene interrupted himself with a click of his tongue. "But you're not here to listen to me spout parental sympathies. This horse, gentlemen, this horse is no ordinary toy. It's a masterpiece. If it is of the age and quality it appears to be, it belongs in a museum."

"So you've seen one like this before," Dean pressed.

"Oh no! I dare say there is no other like this one. It's quite unique in several ways."

"Such as?" Sam urged.

"The way the horse is mounted to the rocker base, for one." Eugene popped to his feet. "Follow me, please." He led them into a back room of the store where a few shabby rocking horses lounged among other derelict toys waiting in boxes and on shelves. "That one under the window, on the swinging-stand, is an example of the type of rocking horses made from the late 1800's on. The ones with curved rockers were the earliest form, and the more acute the curve, the older the horse in general. But, you'll notice that all of these have somewhat straight legs, which are bolted to the outside of the rockers or to the swing-beam."

"Our horse isn't," Sam agreed with a nod.

Eugene nodded like a bobble-head. "The one in the photo is mounted more as a converted carousel horse might be, onto a base between the rockers. This allowed the carver to give it a much more animated, life-like stance. Though I do not think this was a conversion, mind you. The parts seem of an age, and too well fitting to be married."

He peered closer at the picture. "Oh my, oh my! Even the bottoms of the hooves are accurately carved. I've only seen one that detailed in my entire career. And the leather tack, its saddle and so forth, it appears to be nineteenth century as well. Just look at that delicately wrought bit, the engraving on the stirrups and the gilt rosettes on the bridle and martingale!"

Dean had to glance away. He was pretty sure he was about to see Eugene's o-face, and that was one image he didn't want recorded in his brain. He shot Sam a gleeful look that Sam refused to connect with. Which meant Sam was about to lose his cool, too.

If the circumstances weren't so grim, Dean would egg ol' Eugene on, just to try to break Sam up. Instead, he cleared his throat and set his amusement squarely behind his professionalism. "I'm no expert, but even I can see it's something special. What we really need to know is anything you can tell us about the maker. We're trying to track down some kind of provenance on this thing."

Eugene handed the photo back to Sam with what appeared to be some slight reluctance. "I'm sorry, but without being able to examine the horse directly, the best I can offer are guesses and suppositions."

"That'll be more reliable information than we have," Sam assured him.

"All right then," Eugene nodded, and shepherded them back to his office. After refilling their cups, he got down to the details. "The horse is from the mid-1800's. I would estimate 1850 to 1865, judging by the style of the tack. It is most likely an English piece. It was almost certainly a bespoke piece made for someone in the nobility, or for export to some very wealthy individual in the United States. It appears to be in completely original condition, but obviously lovingly cared for throughout its existence."

"The prime evidence of that is the condition of the hair-on-hide covering," Eugenewent on. "An upholstered horse is a rare thing. Most were merely painted dapple-grey. But the condition of the covering makes this horse among the rarest of the rare. Normally, the skin dries out and sadly deteriorates simply due to age and normal handling, but this appears to have weathered the decades in an almost pristine condition. As for the horse's wooden form, it is exquisite. However, it does not quite resemble the carving styles of any of the major manufacturers of the time, so it may have been a one-off effort by an individual craftsman."

"Most horses, however, were marked by their carver in some way," Eugenecontinued, "Usually under the saddle, or on the underside of the belly. Sometimes, under the forelock or tail. The rocker bows were also frequently marked, though usually only with paint which is often worn away."

"How much would a horse like this be worth today?" Sam asked. He was genuinely interested. Dean took notes because he knew he'd forget half of it before he got out the door.

"Now there's a difficult question. Estimating the value of a unique piece is more a guess than otherwise. I would put an auction estimate on this horse of around six thousand dollars, but it could easily go for almost twice that, depending on collector interest."

Sam looked shocked and Dean let out a low whistle. "Quite a yard-sale find, then."

Eugene's eyes went white all the way around and the pitch of his voice slid up about half an octave. "This horse was in a yard-sale?"

Dean couldn't resist. "Yeah. It was sold for two hundred dollars."

Sam leaned forward because Eugene looked for a moment as if he might faint.

"That's… that's extraordinary! The stuff antique dealers' legends are made of,"Eugene gasped.

"The stuff other sorts of legends are made of, too, unfortunately," Sam added, his tone soft and darker.

Eugene set his cup aside. "I wish I could offer more precise information, but from a photograph, this is the best I can do."

"You've been very helpful," Sam assured him as he rose. "If you think of anything else, please give me a call."

"Oh, of course! And please, if you recover this horse," Eugene's voice and expression turned wistful, "if it's at all possible, I want to see it first-hand."

"If we can swing that, Eugene," Dean told him with a grin, "You can drool over it all you want."

"Oh, I would wear a thick bib. Drool might damage the hide," Eugene laughed, and showed them to the door of the shop.

"So, what do you think of Poplin the Younger?" Sam asked after they'd merged intoPhiladelphia's lunch hour traffic.

"I think he's a helluva nice guy," Dean muttered, scowling at a jerk who was forcing his way into their lane ahead of them, regardless that there was only about a quarter-car-length of empty space. "And if he had his shop in Goldwood, I'd be hopin' he had a real strong alibi, because a dude that age still playin' with kids' toys is freakin' creepy."

"What would be his motive?" Sam looked over with half a smile.

"Crazy doesn't need one."

"No, but cursed objects always do," Sam said.

"Then let's figure out My Little Possessed Pony's motive."

-oOo-

**_That Evening…._**

Tom Cooper had never been in this neighborhood before, which amused him a little. His construction firm took him all over the upper eastern US, but his own town still had unexplored corners. If it hadn't been for a wreck snarling traffic and prompting his impulsive detour, he wouldn't be here at all.

He glanced at the houses on both sides of the quiet street with professional assessment. Most of them were older, built in the post-War housing boom, and pretty much cookie-cutter clones even now. Tom was reaching for his GPS when something up on the next corner caught his eye, something half-hidden by a couple of trash cans.

"What the heck?" He pulled to the curb and got out. "I'll be danged, it _is_ a horse." Tom stroked the proudly curved, hide-covered neck of the wooden toy. It felt uncannily like a living animal with the late afternoon sun warming it.

The trash cans were stenciled with a house-number. Tom went up the walk of the house marked with the same, and rang the bell. A woman barely cracked the door. "Yes?"

"Hello, ma'am. I was just passing by and saw that rocking horse you have out by the street. Are you really throwing it away?"

"Huh? Rocking horse? I didn't put anything like that out on the curb. If you want it, take it." The woman closed the door. Tom heard a chain rattle and a deadbolt click as he turned to step off the stoop.

Tom dropped the tailgate on his truck and hefted the rocking horse, the muscles in his arms and back bunching against the unexpected weight of the thing. "Hope you weren't hopin' to retire to that big pasture in the sky," he chuckled as he slid it back towards the cab and stepped up into the bed to tie the toy down. "With my two, you'll be ridden hard and put up wet for another year or two at least."

A breeze ruffled the horse's heavy forelock across an amber glass eye, for a crazy second making it look like it winked. He gave the rocking horse a playful swat on its wooden rump and jumped down out of the truck bed.

"Julie's gonna freakin' kill me for draggin' this thing in," he muttered, then grinned and headed for home.


	4. Chapter 4

"I dunno, man." Dean tossed his pen onto the table and shoved their Dad's journal aside. "I'm comin' up with squat, and I'm real sick of bein' one jump behind this damn thing. I'm ready to get a bullhorn and start drivin' up and down the streets, warnin' people about the monster."

Sam's rueful smile slid off his face. "Not a bullhorn, fliers."

"You want to post 'Beware of killer rocking horse!' posters on telephone poles beside all the all the yard sale signs and lost cat pictures? I was kidding, Sam. Sorta."

"I'm not, sorta," Sam shot back, then shrugged. "This thing, it's an opportunistic predator. It's not jumping kids walking home from school; it's relying on their parents bringing it into the house."

"Trojan horse by Fisher-Price," Dean interjected with a grimace.

"Exactly. What if we spread the word that the horse is stolen goods, maybe even offer a reward? Even if nobody turns it over to us, it might keep the next person from picking it up."

Dean tilted his head, considering that. "Call me crazy, but I can't come up with a better way to warn people off this thing."

Sam pulled his computer closer. "I can photo-manip Ethan out of the picture and we can post 'em anywhere parents might see 'em."

"Oh, hey, I spotted a Plucky's on the way in," Dean teased. "We gotta put one there."

"You can go in and put that one up," Sam shot back in his 'I'm pretending to be too absorbed to really listen' tone of voice.

"Aw, man, again with the clowns? You'll face down a vampire with nothing but a butter-knife, but clowns still make your gonads shrivel?"

"Two words for you. Air travel." Sam gave him a sour glance over the top of the screen.

"Hey, planes crash every day."

"And clowns kill, so shut it," Sam snapped.

"Geez, you meet one killer clown…." The look on Sam's face then warned Dean off the subject, for now. "How many of these you think we oughta get printed up?"

"At least a hundred," Sam said. "We need to blanket the town pretty thoroughly."

"Yeah, if this thing has come back to home-base."

"It seems to be making up for lost time, so yeah, it'll be here soon. If it's not already cozied up in some kid's bedroom," Sam answered with a scowl.

"Golden ray of sunshine."

"I do my best." Sam straightened, and then copied the altered photo over to a USB drive. "While you were scouting for Plucky's, I noticed a copy shop. Let's go."

-oOo-

Dean blinked and rubbed his face. He glanced first at the television; now displaying a muted infomercial instead of the movie he had begun watching when he stretched out on the bed. He looked across the dark room to where Sam still sat at the dinette table, his face lit by whatever he was studying on the screen. "Is that Jethro Tull?"

Sam looked over, startled, then jiggled something at the side of his computer. The trilling flute tune cut off. "Sorry, didn't realize I'd pulled the headphone jack loose."

"Any particular reason you're listening to vintage Tull at," Dean squinted at his watch, "Two-thirty in the morning?"

"It's incidental, a file embedded in this website," Sam grumbled. "But it's appropriate." Sam leaned back and stretched, his next words coming out in a yawn. "I still don't know for sure what this thing is, but I've got a wild theory."

Dean sat up and tugged his pillows around behind his back. "Lay it on me."

"Ok. This thing isn't operating like any cursed object we've ever encountered, and we've encountered a lot."

"True," Dean nodded. "Operative word being: object. Every other cursed object we've run across stays put. They don't go hunting up their next victim."

"Right!" Sam leaned forward, an eager edge in his voice. "But this rocking horse seems to be coming to life and carrying these kids off. So, I started looking for any entity that does operate like this thing. And the one thing that does is a kelpie."

Dean blinked. "A seaweed monster?"

Sam shook his head. "A kelpie is a vicious type of Fae that's native to Ireland andScotland. It's said to appear to people near bodies of water in the form of a beautiful horse wearing a luxurious saddle and bridle. When someone tries to ride it, they're like super-glued onto its back. The kelpie runs away with them into the water and devours them entirely, except for their liver. In the oldest versions of the legend, it prefers children as victims."

"Gross," Dean grimaced and felt a chill along his spine. "If this thing is a kelpie… you're sayin' these kids are the worst kind of dead?"

Sam seemed to shrink a little in his chair, that triumphant eureka light dying out of his eyes. "Yeah. Maybe. I hope not. But that's the closest known match I can find to this thing."

Dean got up and went over to the table. He leaned over Sam's shoulder and scrolled through the pages his brother had up. "Sure sounds like our rocking horse, but all the pieces still don't fit. From what it's saying here, a kelpie can take the form of a man or a woman too, but I don't see anything about one being able to go full-on stealth and make like a piece of wood."

"Right, but there's lore that might hint at an explanation for that. The stories about kelpies were sometimes conflated with the ones about selkies."

"I can see why, if someone mumbled," Dean said. "Ok, what's a selkie?"

"A sort of were-seal."

Dean blurted a chuckle. "A were-_seal?_ You're joking, right?"

Sam gave him a deadpan look. "At two-thirty in the morning? I don't have the brain function left to pull crap over on you. Selkies are benign were-seals, from the same area. The legends say that when they come on land and take human form, they shed their seal-skins and hide them. If you can find a selkie's skin and keep it locked away, they're trapped on land and are under your control. There's some sort of powerful magic in the skins, not in the creature itself."

"The horsehide," Dean concluded.

"Yeah. If that rocking horse is covered with a kelpie hide, there's really no predicting what this thing might be able to do. That possibility takes it from cursed object to something like a nonhuman vengeful." Sam pulled a map over. The one they'd marked with each of the abductions. "And look at this. See anything we didn't notice the first time?"

"Water," Dean said after a long moment. "All the abductions were within a mile of a big creek or river."

"Most of which are tributaries of the Susquehanna," Sam added.

"And we could almost throw a rock into it from here. So, it sounds like if this is a kelpie, it's claimed this river." Dean said.

"Looks like it," Sam agreed glumly.

"One bright side to this," Dean offered with a clap to Sam's shoulder.

"What? I could use one about now," Sam groaned. He closed his browser and clicked the shut-down icon.

"If someone managed to tan a kelpie's hide, that means there's gotta be a way to kill the bastards."

"At this point, I'm ready to burn the thing and scatter the ashes, just to be sure," Sam answered. He rose a bit stiffly as his computer went dark.

"Not much can come back from that to kick you in the nads," Dean agreed. "We'll find the damned monster, Sammy, and we'll gank it before it grabs another kid. We're not leavin' till we do."

-oOo-

"It's my turn!" Abby grabbed their pony's rein. The small horse curved its neck around and dropped its head to relieve the uneven pressure from the bit. It flicked its ears and lashed its long grey tail, as impatient as its would-be rider.

"Is not! I barely got on! And stop yellin', Mommy and Daddy's gonna hear you!" Alex tugged the rein out of his sister's hand and urged the dapple-grey back into lively motion. The rockers thumped against the carpet as Alex swayed the horse to the precarious limits of its arc.

"Smoky's not just _your_ horse. We're supposed to share! You stop and let me ride or I'm gonna tell on you!"

"Ok, ok. You're such a _baby_." Alex leaned back and pulled on the reins. The rocking horse slowed its sway and went still once more. "We'll share. You can ride behind me, then I'll ride behind you."

Alex took his bare foot out of the stirrup so his sister could get on.

"I ain't no baby! I'm 'xactly the same age as you, you big green booger!" Abby grabbed onto Alex and pulled herself up behind him onto Smoky's rump. "I wanna ride by myself."

"Nuh uh, I'm nine minutes older. Grandma says so! So I'm the big brother and you're the little sister and you gotta do what I say. Ow! Don't pinch!"

"I didn't pinch you on purpose. I was just tryin' to get on and Smoky moved. And 'sides, I'm bigger than you so you can just make me!"

"Giddap, Smoky!" Alex slapped the reins against the rocking horse's neck and bounced his heels against its hollow wooden belly.

Smoky snorted then reared. His forelegs beat the air, freed from his rockers. The transformed toy gave a little buck, kicking out with his hind legs. The rockers dissolved into algae-green mist.

Abby squealed and went head first off over Smoky's slippery rump. Her face smacked the floor with a solid thud and she went still and limp.

"Abby!" Alex twisted in the saddle, tried to jump off but he couldn't make his legs move to take his feet out of the stirrups.

"Smoky! Stop!" He hauled back on the reins with all his might as the horse ran straight towards the bedroom window across the room.

Smoky shook his head so hard the reins flew out of Alex's hands. Alex grabbed onto Smoky's mane, his eyes wide and scared. The bedroom window slid open all by itself. Smoky jumped right through it.

The window slammed down behind them.


	5. Chapter 5

**_The Next Morning_**

The brothers sat a prudent distance away, the big black Impala as concealed as it could be in a suburban neighborhood. There wasn't much of the Cooper house they could see from concealment, but the scanner radio's chatter kept them informed on the activity.

"Think they've cleared out?" Dean asked, a few minutes after yet another patrol car pulled away.

"Looks like it." Sam slid the binoculars back into their case and tossed them into the back seat.

Dean ducked his head and squinted towards their restricted view of the pleasant looking home, situated in the center of a generous double lot. "Man, I'd rather be bare-ass naked and starin' down half a dozen demons than doin' this again."

"Dealing with a pack of demons bare-handed would be a pleasure compared to this," Sam gritted. "Whatever's happened to this kid is on my head. We should have had this case wrapped up days ago, but I can't get ahead of the damn thing."

"Don't beat yourself up, Sam." Dean buttoned his collar and tightened his tie. "I was wrong. Nobody's had to deal with anything like this before. No lore, no playbook, no handy-dandy banishment ritual. We're flyin' blind."

"Yeah, and I keep smashing into walls like a stupid fool while this monster tears apart another little kid."

"We'll get it. We have to go on a door to door search to find this kelpie or whatever-the-hell? That's what we'll do." Dean started the car and pulled up the street to the Cooper home.

-oOo-

The last thing Sam or Dean expected to see when they walked into the bedroom was that big grey rocking horse.

"It's here? Why is it still here?" Sam approached it as if the horse might lash out with its lifted leg or snap at him with its carved white teeth.

"You sure it's the same toy?" Dean circled it at a prudent distance as if it were a real horse, a vicious one.

"I'm sure." Sam's face drew into a fierce scowl. "I've spent a whole lot of time staring at this damned thing's picture. It's the same one."

He reached out and grabbed the reins close to the tarnished brass bit. The horse swayed on its rockers towards the pull of Sam's hand. Nothing more than an old, oversized rocking horse covered in sleek, grey-dappled pony-hide.

Dean poked it right in an amber glass eye. It reacted as violently as any other inanimate wooden toy.

"Poplin said rocking horses are usually marked somewhere by their maker," Sam commented. He lifted the horse's thick forelock to scrutinize the whirled hair on the toy's forehead.

"Then we may be the first to discover an original Oberon siggie," Dean snorted. His face drew up in distaste as he gingerly lifted the horse's heavy swath of tail to check underneath.

"Or Beelzebub's," Sam grumbled. "But seriously, if we find a sigil, we might be able to obliterate it and turn this thing back into nothing more dangerous than a very old toy." He squatted to unbuckle the saddle girth. "Hey! Check this out."

Dean crouched beside him as Sam reached out a finger and swiped a small clod of wet mud and grass clippings out from under the edge of one carved miniature horse shoe. Dean lurched up and punched the horse on the neck. "Where the hell have you taken those kids?" he snarled.

The force of the blow sent Smoky up onto one set of rocker blades and back down with a muffled thump. Dean's mouth pursed and he shook the sting out of his bruised hand behind his back.

"I doubt it's going to respond to our usual interrogation techniques." Sam rose. "Let's get this monster out of here."

Dean cupped a hand around one elegant, chipped ear. "You tell us what you've done to those kids, or we'll take you apart splinter by splinter."

He might as well have threatened the door. They each took an end and upturned the horse, working it through the door and down the hall. "One thing for sure," Sam commented, "None of the kids moved this on their own. It's got to weigh a good hundred-fifty pounds."

"Every ounce of it," Dean grunted as they worked the unwieldy thing down the stairs, Sam first. He could almost believe it was subtly resisting their efforts, parts somehow catching on the balusters or scraping along the walls.

"_Noooo!_" Abby launched herself at them as they neared the end of the stairs. She slammed against the back of Sam's knees, almost knocking him off his feet.

"Abby! Stop that!" When her mother dived for her to pull her away, Abby wrapped herself tightly around Sam's legs and dug her fingers in far enough that Sam winced. She kept screaming "No!" at such a shrill panicked pitch Dean was sure his eardrums were going to pop and the windows shatter.

"NO! _No!_ Don't take Smoky! He's gonna bring Alex back!" she wailed when her Dad stepped in to literally peel her off Sam. About time, too. Sam was looking almost as panicky as the kid by then.

"Daddy, _please!_" she wailed against Cooper's shirt front. "Please don't let 'em take Smoky! If they take him away he'll never, ever, _ever_ bring Alex home!"

"Aww, baby," Tom groaned and Dean had to look away from the anguish on the man's face as Cooper rubbed his cheek against his daughter's hair. "Smoky's just a toy. He can't bring Alex home. These policemen are going to take good care of Smoky, but they may be able to figure out where Alex is by checking him out at the police station."

That set off a level of hysterics that was as frightening as it was gut-wrenching. Dean didn't know a little kid could turn that color. By the time her mother took her away, Cooper was almost as livid.

"Do you have to take the damn horse?" Cooper gritted.

"I'm sorry sir," Sam answered, his sympathy plain on his face. "We do. It's evidence."

"Evidence of what?" Cooper burst out. "It's just a toy! It has nothing to do with Alex going missing!"

Abby's screams were still painfully audible from somewhere in the back of the house.

"We think it does," Dean answered, trying for stern authority to get through to the man.

Tom Cooper stepped forward, and Dean was reminded again that the dude was almost as tall as Sam and wider through the shoulders. "Then you gather your evidence off it here. My daughter's been through enough already. _We've_ been through enough already."

It is very difficult to project calming authority while straining to hold onto an upside down rocking horse. Sam backed the rest of the way off the stairs, and he and Dean flipped the horse back onto its rockers with a flicker of shared relief.

"We can't do that, Mr. Cooper—" Sam began, before he got Cooper right up close and way too personal, his hands fisted in Sam's jacket lapels. Sam spread his hands in prudent surrender.

"HEY! Back off!" Dean barked, his hand going behind his back.

Cooper might be stressed to the breaking point and furious, but he was no idiot. He backed off. The new distance made his demeanor only slightly less threatening. "You want this horse, you come back with a search warrant. Now get out of my house!"

"Mr. Cooper, please. Our investigation—"

Sam was interrupted again, this time by Mrs. Cooper. She held a gasping Abby in her arms. "Tom, she stopped breathing and fainted!"

The savage look Cooper shot them as he took his sobbing wife and daughter into his arms sent Dean and Sam out the front door without any further protests.

"Enthrallment?" Sam gritted as they hurried down the front walk.

"Oh yeah."

"Stake out the place and steal the damn horse?" Sam snapped.

"Oh hell yeah," Dean agreed.

-oOo-

The sun was beginning to set when Sam's phone rang. Really rang. Who the heck's phone _rings_ anymore?

"You do know you can change that to something that doesn't make you sound like a brain-dead dink, right?" Dean drawled.

Sam answered with one of his better bitch-faces before looking away. His upbeat voice as he answered made his whole body a liar. "Hello, Eugene. Hold on, let me put you on speaker. My partner's here with me."

"Oh! Certainly!" Eugene's cheerful voice burbled out of the speaker. "Good evening to you too, Agent Perry."

"Hey, Eugene," Dean answered. "What's up?"

"I have some information for you on the provenance of that exquisite rocking horse."

Both brothers straightened from their relaxed slouches at that. "Great—" Sam laid his phone on the dash between them and reached for his notebook and pen. "What have you got?"

"I hope you're not in a rush, because this is rather a long story," Eugene warned them.

"Hey, for this, we've got all the time you need," Dean assured him.

"Lovely! As it covers, goodness, over a century now, it's not easy to condense. After your visit, I spoke to my father about that remarkable horse. Nothing more came of it until he remembered _his_ father speaking of a consignment of remarkable toys my great-grandfather had brought over from Europe shortly after World War One. Dad and I went back through the records and found the sale that had so impressed itself on the family memory."

"And our rocking horse was in it?" Sam asked.

"Oh yes, almost certainly. And it wasn't even the star of the show, so to speak."

Sam and Dean exchanged mutual expressions of suspicion. "What was?" Dean asked.

"Oh, the most marvelous doll house! Over six feet long when it is opened, and almost as tall. It's a piece of fine cabinet-making in its own right, but the furnishing and details were simply indescribable. As if someone built a palace for a fairy queen."Eugene's voice was so full of awe and innocent enthusiasm, it was a wonder little rainbow bubbles didn't waft right out of the speaker. "My great-grandfather all but waxed poetic in his records as he described it all. And among the Poplins, Hiram was renowned as a man of few words, so we know this lot was truly a gathering of masterpieces."

Dean rolled his eyes at Sam. Sam gave him a playful backhand to the shoulder. "Do you know where all those toys came from?" Sam asked.

"And where they went to? Someone had to have some serious cash, even back in the day, right?" Dean added.

"My goodness yes! 'Serious cash' is an understatement, Agent Perry. This shipment was purchased for a price that would have kept a working class family in comfort for almost two years."

"Wow, in any decade, that's impressive," Dean commented, his eyebrows rising.

"And all that for toys," Sam added. "That's not counting what this person spent on everything else."

"Indeed," Eugene answered. "Ah, the good ol' days of no income taxes, no corporate taxes… It was incredible the amount of wealth those old robber-barons could accumulate."

"No occupational safety standards, no paid vacations, no worker's comp," Sam countered with a grin.

"True, we're far better off on the whole, even though sometimes I feel higher taxes are more inevitable now than their proverbial partner of death. After all, we only have to die once," Eugene agreed with a chuckle. "At any rate, the shipment was sold to Mr. Amos P. Hart, one of the local timber magnates who made up much of early Goldwood's high society."

A sigh whispered through the phone then. "And speaking of death, that lavish gift to his children brought little joy after all."

"What happened?" Dean asked, urgency sharpening his tone slightly.

"Oh, nothing at all like the current tragedies, if that's what you're thinking," Eugeneassured him. "Mr. Hart had two children. A daughter, who was twelve or thirteen years old, I believe, and a son a number of years younger. Both children were discovered in the river early one morning between Christmas of 1919 and New Year's. The little boy was already gone, drowned. His sister succumbed to pneumonia only days later. No one ever knew why they had gone into the water. You can imagine how frigid and unwelcoming it must have been in the middle of a late December night. The Harts left Goldwood shortly afterwards, and as far as I know, they never returned." Eugene clicked his tongue. "Of course, there were whispers of foul play, but the truth remains a mystery to this day. Such a senseless tragedy."

"Really sad," Sam agreed. "What about the original owner of the lot? Do you know anything about them?"

"Very little," Eugene answered. "The toys originally came from the estate of the Earl of Holkham, then Lord Douglas Edgar Lovel, I believe. That's all I know, I'm afraid."

"That'll be enough if we need to track it back that far," Dean assured him, and Sam gave him a nod of agreement.

"Thanks, Eugene. We really appreciate your cooperation," Sam told him.

"Any time, Agents! If there's any other way I might be able to assist you, please, don't hesitate to ask. My prayers are with you, and the children."

"We appreciate it, Eugene. Trust me, we need 'em and those kids do too," Sam answered.

"We'll keep you posted," Dean promised Poplin and then Sam ended the call.

Dean changed out the regular binoculars for their night-scope. "You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"

"That this thing's rampage didn't start with the deaths of those kids in the twenties," Sam nodded as he opened his laptop. "I'm going to see what I can track down about the Harts, and that Earl."

-oOo-

"Eugene's story checks out," Sam announced a couple of hours later. "Amos P. Hart did have two kids, Olivia and William. Thirteen and four years old. Both of them were pulled out of the river on December twenty-ninth, 1919. William was already dead. Olivia was alive, but she passed away from pneumonia on January fourth. After their kids' funeral, the Harts closed up the house and left the state."

Dean yawned and poured another cup of coffee from the thermos. "So Eugene's family's got long memories. Doesn't tell us anything new, though."

"Yeah, but having more information, I was able to track this down in the Library of Congress," Sam continued. "One of their former servants wrote a memoir of her years of service. It was never published, but it's recently been digitized. Listen to this: _'Miss Olivia's mind was unhinged in delirium from the moment she was pulled out of the river. She insisted that their new rocking horse had come to life Christmas night, when Master William playfully dipped its muzzle into a small bucket of water, to give it a drink as if it were a real pony. No one was able to soothe the poor child's pitiful distress. She insisted over and over that the rocking horse had carried William away into the river and her along with it. She would clutch our hands and in a hoarse desperate whisper insist that she had fought against the fiend as fiercely as she was able, that she had done all in her power to snatch her brother free from its back. Over and over, no matter how she was reassured, Olivia begged forgiveness from her parents and from our Holy Savior for her failure to rescue dear little William.'_"

Sam blew out a breath. "It goes on to say that even when she was so sick she could hardly breathe, her lips kept moving, mouthing that story over and over. From what this woman says, they finally doped Olivia into a coma with morphine, hoping she could get some rest."

"'Cause that's the best thing to do for someone with breathing trouble. Give 'em a whoppin' dose of a strong opiate. Idiots," Dean snapped.

"Yeah, so no surprise that Olivia died without ever regaining consciousness. I can't give them the benefit of ignorance. Even back then, her doctor had to know that would happen. They probably realized she wouldn't recover and thought they were helping her to die in peace."

"Poor kid. Half-drowned by a kelpie then kevorked by your own parents. What a way to go." Dean took a sip of coffee. It was lukewarm now and didn't do much to melt the cold lump in his gut from that story. He could imagine Olivia's guilt and distress way too easily; weak, flat on her back, dying, trying to convince a bunch of clucking civilians that the monster is _right there_, ready to eat them…. "It's a wonder she didn't come back as a vengeful."

"She may have, if she hadn't died deep in dreamland," Sam nodded. "Anyway, I managed to find some information on that estate over in England too. No smoking gun, but it sure sounds suspicious. After the Earl died, his eldest son donated a lot of surplus to be sold to raise money for relief after the War. The toys were part of it because he'd lost five younger brothers and sisters between 1917 and 1919. He was the only one left."

"You think he maybe whacked all his sibs for their inheritance?"

Sam shrugged. "Who knows? That was the time period of that massive pandemic of killer 'flu. Young people were dropping like flies. Besides, he was the eldest son, so he would have inherited the title, estate and the lion's share of everything else anyway, but some people go crazy with greed. There's another suspect, though, since we know at least the rocking horse is some serious occult hardware. I found a note with the inventory list that went to the auction house. Apparently, this lot of toys was sent to the old Earl as payment of a very long over-due and legally contested debt."

"Oh, and that's not fishy at all," Dean scoffed.

"So, now we have a couple of possible motives, the history, and outside confirmation the horse is some sort of semi-animate cursed object," Sam mused. He closed his laptop and rubbed his eyes. "All of which is worth exactly squat because it puts us right back where we are now. Waiting for the monster to make its next move. Any of that coffee left?"

"Yeah, but it's cold enough now you might as well throw some ice in it." Dean passed him the thermos.


	6. Chapter 6

Two days later, they were still stuck in the damn car. There was always someone awake in the house, 'round the clock. Sam wondered if that meant Abby was a physical or mental wreck and needed constant care, or if her parents were taking her story seriously. Regardless, it was putting serious brakes on their burglary plan.

Sam was beginning to think they might be reduced to calling in a fake gas-leak report again, just to get a chance at that house. He shot a glance at Dean's peaceful sleeping face and then grimaced and stuck his head out the open window. Vegas money was on him dying from methane poisoning before they got that break. Damned onions. He was so gonna eat a couple of big, greasy burritos right before Dean's watch rolled around.

Sam picked up the night-vision binoculars and trained them on the house again. He frowned, focused in. Then dropped the binocs, slapped Dean and bailed out the door almost all at once. There was no time to clue Dean in. The horse ran across the big backyard, Abby hunched down small on its back.

Sam vaulted the hedge and tore across the yard, trying to close the distance. There was no way to catch up, so he made his best guess as Smoky gathered himself and leaped the far hedge. Behind him, Sam heard the roar of the Impala so he knew Dean had the same idea. If you can't catch something running from you, try to herd it into an ambush.

The kelpie might have been vicious and preternatural, but apparently it wasn't much brighter than any other pony. It veered away from Sam as Sam waved his arms and made an impossible lunge towards it, then it reared and wheeled away from the Impala coming up close on its heels from the other direction.

Their pursuit required some fancy maneuvering and the destruction of a couple of manicured yards, but they got the thing cornered finally between the back of a garage, the car and a high board fence. Abby didn't move through the whole chase, but Sam got a glimpse of her face. Wide-eyed and terrified, she was aware but somehow unable to escape. He wasn't sure how she even held her seat, considering some of the evasive moves the kelpie made during the chase.

Dean bailed out of the Impala with a yell and threw the thermos at the horse as it tried to leap over the hood of the car.

The horse gave a horrific shriek and almost flung itself over backwards as it reared and pivoted away from the big scary man throwing things. Sam tried a flying tackle to sweep Abby off the saddle. He slammed into the horse's side.

They all almost went down as Smoky staggered. But the damned horse managed to stay on its hooves and Sam learned two unwelcome new facts. First, wooden teeth hurt just as badly as the real things when they clamp onto your thigh and second, he suddenly couldn't let go of the evil little bastard. He was stuck to the dappled hide like it was a duct-tape wall at a frat party. "_DON'T TOUCH IT!_" he bellowed. "I can't let go!"

"The hell?!" Dean blurted, and made a grab through the rear window, coming out with a tire iron.

"I'm stuck to it!" Sam might be joined at the hip to the thing now, but he was far from giving up the fight. He grabbed for a rein and jerked the horse's head around so hard it was snapping at its own shoulder. Sam shoved his full weight against its rump. He'd remembered reading about this once, an equine pit-maneuver. Hell, physics alone told him the thing should fall over.

Instead, the old leather snapped.

Then everything happened at once, but there was so much adrenaline flooding Sam's brain that for him, it all was a series of freeze-frames. The rein going slack in his hand. Dean, the tire iron over his head, in that split-second before it whistled downwards. The horse's hindquarters swinging around as it bucked, pivoting on its forelegs, dragging Sam along with it.

Sam twisted till he felt his skin and muscle begin to rip, trying to keep Dean in sight. The kelpie lashed out with its hind legs, both small hooves catching Dean under the chin in a powerful uppercut that sent Dean's head snapping back and the tire iron twirling away into the darkness.

Dean hit the ground hard. The kelpie made a run for it, swinging wide around Dean's unmoving body. Sam snarled and did everything he could to slow the damn thing down, leaning back against the horse's pull until he was almost ripped in half. For all the good it did, he might as well have laid down across the horse's ass and saved his strength.

-oOo-

He heard birds tweeting. Not the cartoon variety that whirled around with little stars, or the high-pitched noise in the ears and retinal sparks that were the real deal when you got your bell rung hard. Nope, this was actual birdsong, from actual feathery little crap factories. Dean slowly opened his eyes to find himself staring up at a deep blue pre-dawn sky. He had no idea where he was, or why he'd lain outside long enough to be damp with dew right along with the grass.

Dean started to sit up. Ohhh, bad idea. His neck felt like it was going to snap like a rotten twig. Dean eased back down, then held his throbbing head steady with one hand and used the other to push himself up again. Still hurt like a son of, but he made it this time. "Sam?"

Nobody answered but the birds. That's when Dean realized the rumbling he heard wasn't loose marbles rolling around in his head. The Impala sat parked at a crazy angle nearby, lights on, driver's door wide open, engine idling.

He staggered to it, the ground seeming to tilt one way under his feet while his gut lurched the other way. "Sam?" Dean grabbed onto the door and spat bile, then looked inside.

Nothing seemed to be disturbed. Which was really damned disturbing, considering he still wasn't quite sure where he was and, more importantly, where Sam was. Dean dropped into the driver's seat and tilted the rearview mirror down.

Well, that explained the scrambled brains. His jaw was blue and swollen, the ugly color spreading down his neck. There was dried blood at the corner of his mouth, which explained why his tongue was swollen and painful, too. He'd somehow bitten right through it. Dean gingerly touched the puffy skin under his chin and felt some big raw patches. That's when it all started coming back.

Dean dug his phone out of his pocket, relieved to find it in one piece and holding its charge. He'd been out almost an hour. He hit Sam's key. The call went straight to voicemail, which was never a good sign.

Friggin' Arc Mobile's live customer service wouldn't be available for another three hours. He called Sam's phone again, and this time waited for the beep. "Sammy, hang in there. I'm figuring this out. I'll find you, just hold on."

Dean stuck his phone back in his pocket and pulled Sam's laptop over. The battery was low, but the charge held out long enough for him to get a fix on the old Hart mansion. He studied the map, then closed the computer and pulled out, heading for the river.

-oOo-

To say the Hart estate was in Goldwood was to stretch semantics farther than the city limits. Dean found himself on a narrowing road through the beginning of farmland. Even though he knew from the satellite map where the place was, he still almost missed the turn-off. The stone gatepost pillars were buried in the middle of unruly bushes and briars. They looked just like all the other miles of overgrown fencerow he'd passed, the narrow gap marking the old drive easy to miss if you blinked at the wrong time.

Dean stopped, got a set of bolt cutters out of the trunk and cut the rusted-stiff chain securing the vine-tangled, corroded, ornate iron gates. There was no way he could take the car up what was once the drive. Briars and brush and even small trees had encroached on the wide brick path until it was almost obliterated. Dean tossed the bolt cutters back in, loaded up a duffel, locked the trunk and steeled himself for at least a quarter-mile stumble across broken terrain.

-oOo-

There was still some open land right around the house, and for that Dean was grateful as he broke through the undergrowth onto the overgrown lawn that surrounded the circle drive in front of the old house. A fountain sat in the center of the drive, spewing only weeds now. It had been one heck of a showplace back in the day, but Dean was in no mood for architectural appreciation. He hurried around the side of the house and down through the vast back yard, towards the river.

About half the way down, the ground was torn up some. Dean squatted to get a closer look. Hoof prints, really small ones, were marked in the torn-up turf and the damp earth beneath. Small, but pressed deep, as if the pony carried a heavy load.

Dean lurched to his feet. The tracks went across the slope, not down it. Not that he could see. He ran the rest of the way down, pushed his way through the thick brush on the river bank. The water slid past, opaque and calm and deep. "SAM?"

There was no answer. Dean searched the bank as best he could. There was nothing, not so much as a broken twig. "**_SAM!_**"

Dean tripped over a root and almost wound up in the water himself. He lay there, breathing hard for a few seconds, getting a grip. The kelpie hadn't made it to the river. Sam wasn't in the river. There was no other option involving the damn river that Dean was willing to consider.

He looked back up the slope. If they weren't in the river, and that thing had come back to home base, there was only one place Sam could be. Dean shoved his way out of the brush and ran back up the slope to the old decaying mansion.


	7. Chapter 7

**_Ninety Minutes Earlier_**

When he realized that dragging his feet and struggling wasn't doing a damned thing to slow the kelpie down, Sam changed tactics. His knife was on his hip. The hip that was stuck fast to the flexing haunch of the galloping kelpie. He tried to work his hand in between. All that did was get his free hand stuck too.

No matter how hard he pulled or yanked or wiggled, Sam couldn't free himself. He did find, however, that he could slide the captured parts over the horse. Downside to that was, as soon as any part of him that hadn't touched the horse did, he was stuck there, too. One of the soles of his shoes tore away from the friction. The ground quickly ripped away the sock underneath and started on his skin.

Sam gave in to the inevitable. He managed to pull himself around so that he was lying sidesaddle on his hip across the kelpie's rump, his torso arched over Abby, his hands spread on the kelpie's bobbing neck. He pulled his legs up as high as he could, and they held as securely as if he'd rested his feet in stirrups. At least he'd get where they were going without his feet being ground down to bloody stubs.

"It's gonna be ok, Abby," he assured the trembling, silent little girl beneath him. "I'm Sam. I won't let anything hurt you."

A measure of relief washed through him when Abby gave a little whimper. "Promise?"

"I promise." He prayed that promise wouldn't turn into a lie. "Abby, did Smoky say anything to you?"

"No, he can't talk," she answered. "I told him and _told_ him to bring Alex back but he wouldn't even move and then I told him to take me to Alex instead so I could bring Alex home and that's when he ran away with me right out the window like he did with Alex!"

All that came out in one shaky burst. Abby whimpered again. "I'm scared, Sam."

"I'm a little scared too, but it's ok. I'll take care of you. You have to promise me one thing first though, with your most serious promise."

"What?"

"That no matter what I tell you to do, you'll do it, right then. Fast as you can. No questions and no fussing—no matter what you see or how scared you are. Can you do that?"

She was quiet so long he wondered if she was going to answer at all.

"I can," she said softly, sounding a little less terrified than before. "I'm not a baby."

"I know. You're very brave."

"Sam? Where's Smoky takin' us?"

"I don't know. To the river, I think."

Abby's head brushed his chest as she tried to crane her head up to look at him. "I can't swim!"

"Don't worry. I can." He wished he could hold her, comfort her somehow, but he could barely even see her.

Neither of them said much after that, because the yards, roadsides and open fields gave way to woods so thick the kelpie had to weave its way through, twisting and leaping at full speed.

Branches slapped them and briars snagged and clawed through his clothes and skin. Sam did his best to wrap himself protectively over Abby without crushing her between his body and the horse.

It was almost a relief when they burst out into the open again. Almost, because Sam could hear rushing water not far away, and smell the wet silt of a riverbank. He lifted his head and opened his eyes. They were at the top of what was once a huge lawn, now overgrown and partly reclaimed by the encroaching woodland. Sam twisted back as much as he could and caught a glimpse of an enormous, crumbling house. The Hart mansion.

From the house, the grounds gradually sloped down over the length of a couple of acres to where willows and taller trees grew.

Where the water's edge waited.

Smoky picked up speed.

A column of blazing, painfully white light materialized inches from the kelpie's nose.

Smoky squealed and whirled away, across the slope, then angled down towards the river again. The apparition blocked its path once more.

"Is that an angel?" Abby whispered beneath Sam as the glowing figure lit up their faces like noon sun.

"Maybe," he whispered back. It was almost a lie, but hey, the devil he didn't know was keeping the devil he knew from drowning them both—so he was rooting for the unknown.

The third time the kelpie tried to make a break for the water, the white light didn't stop its oncoming rush.

It burst around the kelpie's head in a flare so brilliant that Abby screamed and Sam was sure he was blinded.

Smoky reared and they hit the ground hard. Sam grabbed what he hoped was Abby and rolled to his feet.

The colored sunbursts cleared from Sam's vision in time to see the apparition dim into the form of a young girl with long brown hair, dressed in an old-fashioned nightgown. He was flooded with bone-aching cold as she threw her arms around his waist.

"We must go quickly. He won't be frightened away for long!" the phantom told them, her voice distant as an echo.

Sam felt an indescribable sensation, a disorienting wrench in body and soul. In the same instant, the early dawn light dimmed to a broken twilight. He and Abby were now inside what looked like a long abandoned attic. The windows were almost opaque with dust. The roof was rotting away above them, letting the morning light enter in broken patches and brighter shafts that sparkled with swirling dust.

Abby lifted her head from his shoulder and looked around too. "Where are we?" she whispered.

"Inside an old house," he answered. That was about all he was certain of at the moment.

"Did the angel bring us here?"

"Yes." Well, and that too.

"Will she take me home?" Abby clung to him like a spider monkey.

Sam shifted her around as if she were a carry-pack, into a more balanced position. "If she doesn't, I will."

Now that his wits had a chance to settle a little, an unmistakable smell registered. Urine. Abby was wet, but this scent was stale and strong.

"Is anybody here?" he called out softly.

He heard a tiny mewl, not much louder than a kitten, and furtive rustling. Sam considered leaving Abby to wait where they were, or taking her with him. He moved towards the sound, Abby still perched on his hip.

"It's ok," he called out again, hoping he sounded nonthreatening. "I'm Sam. You can come out. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to take Abby home."

"Abby?" a tiny voice echoed.

"Alex!" Abby squealed. "Alex! Come out!"

She wriggled until Sam set her on her feet. He kept a tight hold on her hand, though. Not everything that sounded like family always was.

Across the attic, the door of a massive, mildewed armoire creaked open. A little boy in grubby pajamas peeked at them and then his dirty face lit up with a huge smile. "Abby!"

He tumbled out and ran across the attic. There was no way Sam could have held onto Abby then. She grabbed Alex and they did a little happy dance, both of them babbling away at once.

Sam left them to it, because a tiny girl, younger than Abby and Alex, swung her leg over the opening, her toes straining for the floor. Sam went over and lifted her out. She gave a startled squeak and struggled in his arms.

"It's ok, sweetie," Sam crooned. "I'm here to take you home. You're Sophie, right?"

"Uh huh," she nodded. "But you're a stranger and I'm not a'posed to talk to strangers."

"That's right, but you can talk to policemen, right?"

Sophie's thumb went into her mouth. She nodded, more slowly this time.

"I'm kinda a policeman. My name's Sam. See? We're not strangers any more."

Sam smiled at her and she smiled back, a tiny, shy flicker around her thumb.

"Sophie, where's Ethan?"

She pointed back to the armoire.

Sam swallowed a lump of dread and opened the door wider. Inside, on a nest of mangy fur coats, the little boy from the photo lay curled up.

"Ethan don' feel good," Sophie whispered around her thumb.

"Ethan?" Sam reached in and touched the boy's side. Ethan was warm and breathing. The rush of relief that washed through Sam almost weakened his knees.

Ethan lifted his head and blinked up at Sam. He was thinner now, with dark circles under his eyes. Starving, Sam realized with a jolt. Seven days with no food….

Sam set Sophie down and crouched beside the armoire, his hand still on Ethan's back. "Are you hurt anywhere, Ethan?"

Ethan shook his head. "Jus' tired," he whispered.

Sam picked him up. "I'll take you home, so you can rest in your own bed, ok?"

Ethan nodded against his shirt. "I'm hungry, Sam."

"I know, buddy. It won't be much longer now." Sam looked down at the other three children, gazing back up at him with trust and anticipation. "Ok, I want you all to promise me you'll do exactly what I say. I'm going to take you home, but you have to obey me so I can. Will you do that?"

Three little heads bobbed.

"Ok. Where's the door?"

Alex and Sophie pointed towards the far side of the attic. Sam headed that way, Ethan in his arms and the other three trailing behind like ducklings. He discovered how Ethan had survived his week of captivity as he picked his way across the treacherous, shadowy floor.

The kids might not have had food, but they had access to water. There were containers of all kinds set under the openings in the roof, most of them still holding a little water from the recent rains. A shudder went down his spine as he recalled the latest forecast. Dry weather for at least a week.

"Setting those bowls out to catch rainwater was very smart, Ethan. Good job."

"The big girl told me to do it," Ethan answered.

"The big girl?" Sam echoed.

Sophie piped up. "She don't let the bad horsie get us again."

"Her name's Olivia," Alex said, confirming Sam's suspicion. "This is her house."

Sam slapped his pocket for his phone. It wasn't there. He did still have his wallet, and the lock-pick hidden inside. If the attic was secured only with the old fashioned lever-lock he could see from this side, that one slim hook was all he needed to get them out of here. A relief, because the door swung inwards; so no kicking it open, and the hinge pins were massive, corroded and double-headed, so circumventing the lock entirely by lifting the door out of the frame wouldn't be a quick process.

As soon as he reached out to try the doorknob, the kids gasped and Alex grabbed his wrist. "No! We ain't allowed to touch it! It makes her real mad!"

"It's ok. Olivia will let you out now." She'd damn well better. Sam rattled the doorknob.

**_"Stop!"_**

That shrill, frightened shout seemed to come from everywhere at once. The kids scattered like quail to hide behind trunks and under sheeted furniture.

Sam's teeth began to chatter, and when he exhaled, he could see his breath. Ethan shivered in his arms.

"Olivia?" Sam called out. "It's ok, honey. You have to let me take these kids home."

"No! I must keep them safe!"

An apparition shimmered in front of him, Olivia's face. Her body faded away below the chest, her image strobing in a weird, almost digital flicker. She was running low on juice.

Ethan took one glimpse and buried his face against Sam's neck. Sam drew a calming breath of frigid air and reminded himself that he was dealing with another frightened child here.

"You did save them and keep them safe," he agreed, looking into her spectral eyes. "But you can't keep them with you. I'll watch out for them now, and take them home."

"I had to save _you_," she hissed. Olivia's eyes narrowed. "I was too frightened to save William. I wasn't strong enough to keep the first ones safe. But I'm not afraid anymore, Sam."

She dematerialized, leaving only her voice behind. _And I'm __**very**__ strong now._

An invisible blow knocked the wind out of him and laid him out flat on his back. So, not running low on juice. Conserving it. Sam pushed himself back up onto his feet, one arm still tight around Ethan.

"Olivia," Sam wheezed, "You can't keep them here. There's no food. They'll die."

_Good!_

"You don't mean that," he chided, keeping his voice gentle. "I know you don't. If you were that cruel, you would have let the kelpie drown them too. They need to go home, to their parents."

_They are home! They're mine now. _

Sam scowled and channeled his dad. His voice sliced through the still, unnaturally cold air like whipcord. "They're children, Olivia. Not dolls for you to play with. Stop acting like a spoiled brat."

_But I'm so lonely…._

That sad little whimper broke his heart and froze his spine. "I know you are, sweetie. Look, I can help you be with William again. But you-"

_Quiet! I hear something!_

"Olivia?" The temperature shot up twenty degrees. Sam realized he was talking to empty air. He settled Ethan close by on a sheet-draped settee and went to work on the door lock.


	8. Chapter 8

All the windows and doors were boarded over on the back of the house. Dean made a quick circuit of the whole place, scanning for any obvious way in. There was nothing. Back where he started, he pulled out a crowbar.

Whoever had closed up this house sure knew what they were doing. Dean was sweating through his shirt by the time he had the lower six feet of a tall French window uncovered. It was locked, of course. Whoever shut the place up had been a real belt and suspenders kind of guy. Dean loathed him posthumously.

"Screw this," he muttered, dropped the crowbar, crouched and grabbed the bronze handles of one of the marble urns that flanked the doorway. He swung it up with a snap of his hips, then released it with a shove at the top of its arc. Momentum sent it on a shallow trajectory that took out both glass and mullions in the window. The urn rebounded off the wooden floor inside with a couple of solid thumps.

Dean slung his duffel across his back again and jacked a shell into his sawed-off. He stepped through the generous opening where the window used to be. He heard a door open somewhere in the house with a squeal of rusty hinges.

He was instantly surrounded by arctic temperature air. Almost before he got that sensation processed, he had to deal with a new one. Being punched in the gut so hard he skidded back across the floor on his ass.

Dean gasped for air, wildly searching the room for whatever had walloped him with an invisible two-by-four.

An apparition of a very angry young girl shimmered into view in front of him. "Get out of my house!"

A ten-gauge blast of salt and iron filings dissipated her instantly.

"Kid, this is so not the day for that shit," Dean grumbled, and shoved his aching body back up onto his feet.

-oOo-

The lock was as easy to pick as Sam had hoped it would be. When he turned the knob, the door opened with a rusty screech. "Ok, let's get out of here," he said to the kids clustered round his shins. "Everybody hold hands and follow me. Do exactly what I say."

Sam settled Ethan on his hip again, and the rest trooped along behind him as if they were attached to a string tied to the back of his belt. He led them across the wide landing and down the stairs, testing each one before he committed his full weight.

They crossed the dusty carpet of the second floor landing. Sophie sneezed. Abby wiped Sophie's snot-draped nose with the hem of her own pajama top. Alex declared them both gross. A mighty crash and a couple of solid thumps reverberated through the old house. Sam shushed them all.

They'd made it halfway down the main staircase when a shotgun blast made them all jump. It was the sweetest sound Sam had heard all year.

"Stay on the stairs!" he hissed to the children, then crept towards the sound of the blast. "Dean? Is that you?" Sam called softly.

"Sam?" Dean's shotgun muzzle peeked around the corner first. "You clear?"

"Yeah—and the kids are with me. All of 'em."

Dean stepped into the foyer with a huge grin. "Thank god for that. Everybody ok, dude?"

"Not a scratch on any of 'em. They're just scared and hungry."

"Well, guess you heard me get rid of your little girlfriend," Dean grinned wider. "So we can stroll right on out of here."

"Olivia?" Sam blinked. "She's not the problem."

Sam lunged and grabbed Dean by the forearm and shoulder, swinging brother and ten-gauge around bodily. "That is!"

Dean fired almost point blank right between the kelpie's eyes.

It shrieked like something out of the Pit and retreated fast, hoofs clattering and sliding against the smooth marble of the foyer.

Sam jerked up a big iron doorstop, chased after it and tried to smash the thing's skull—did it even have a skull?

The kelpie shook that blow off too, though now the skin of its head and neck hung in ragged tatters, exposing a macabre mingling of slimy wet wooden bones and muck-green muscle beneath.

It was clear that the monster considered them only obstacles in its path. The kelpie sprang forward and swerved around them both, trying to get to the screaming kids.

Sam slammed it upside the head again with the doorstop, shattering an amber glass eye into little golden shards that scattered across the marble tiles. "Stay on the stairs!" he yelled to the kids.

Dean dropped his shot gun to grab a can of lighter fluid and a book of matches out of his jacket pockets. He sliced the squirt cap off the can with a determined whack of his hunting knife. "Drive it this way!"

Sam bellowed like a berserker, slamming the kelpie with blow after merciless blow with his makeshift war-hammer.

Its other eye shattered. Blinded and its hairy ass well and truly whipped, the kelpie retreated from Sam's attack, wheeled and bolted back towards Dean.

Dean sloshed the entire can of butane over it, struck the book of matches.

The kelpie burst into flame as if the damn thing was made of thermite. Dean scrabbled away, pretty certain his eyebrows were singed off.

The kelpie shrieked and bucked and kicked, engulfed in a ball of sparking, roaring fire. It ran away farther into the house, bouncing off walls and sheet-draped furniture, spreading flames like splashes of water.

Sam and Dean grabbed up a pair of terrified kids each and ran like demons busting out of Hell.

-oOo-

At the edge of the growth that obscured the path back to the road, Sam paused and looked back at the mansion. It was already fully involved, flames licking along every crack in the boards over the windows and doors.

He looked up, to the attic windows. They were bright now, lit up from within by fire. Suddenly, a girl appeared in one, silhouetted against the fire's glow.

Olivia lifted her hand. She waved.

The window exploded in a cloud of flames and glass shards. Sam followed Dean down the ruined driveway to the car and didn't look back again.

-o0o-

Four deliriously happy Happy Meals and two hours later, all the kids were back in their parents' arms, and he and Sam were getting the hell out of Pennsylvania before one of those parental units calmed down enough to start asking awkward questions.

"Got a preference where to head next?" Dean asked as he pulled out of the motel parking lot.

"Nope, just put as many miles between us and here as possible without falling into saltwater," Sam settled his sunglasses on his face and stretched out as much of those stilts he called legs as possible.

"We could lose ourselves in L.A. for a few weeks," Dean shrugged.

"San Diego, then maybe L.A."

"I'm the pilot, you're the navigator," Dean grinned and punched the gas. "San Diego, lock up your daughters, Dean Winchester's comin' to party!"

"Gah, will you get over yourself?" Sam groaned, but then a smile pushed at the bottom of his sunglasses.

-oOo-

They weren't a third of the way through Ohio when Dean realized Sam had been quiet for too long. He glanced over at Sam's profile. Sam stared out the windshield, most likely seeing nothing outside his own head.

"Wow. Didn't take long for the shiny sparkles to wear off this time. You gotta learn self-validation in this profession, Sammy. You're not going to hear many thank-yous, and the ones you do get don't last long. Heck, this one was a win-win. Nobody died, and we didn't bleed. Well, you didn't, and I didn't bleed enough to ruin another damn shirt."

Sam chuffed and met his gaze in the rear view. "You think I didn't learn that, oh, about a week into this life? Look, it's nothing like that. I feel great about getting those kids home. We're frickin' heroes. Again. I don't like leaving loose ends, that's all."

Dean managed to scowl and raise his eyebrows at the same time. "What loose ends? We ganked the monster and got the kids home alive and probably not too emotionally scarred for life. From where I'm sittin', looks like we tied all the ends up in big perky bows!"

"What about Olivia?"

Dean gave that one a half a mile of thought. "You don't think the fire released her?"

"Maybe not. You saw how powerful she is, and it's not like there were any of her remains there."

"Yeah, but her reason for sticking around was to protect kids from that kelpie, right? To redeem herself that way? Well, she's done that now."

"I promised her I'd help her get back to her little brother," Sam answered softly. "I feel like I didn't keep that one."

"You can do what you want, but I am not goin' back to Pennsylvania any time soon just so you can torch some kid's bones."

"I'll talk to Bobby, see if he can pass the word to anybody heading that way," Sam shrugged.

"Ok, super. Can you please lighten up now?"

"There's one other thing," Sam informed him glumly.

"Why does that not surprise me? What now?"

"The other toys from the Earl's estate. What if they were all cursed some how?"

Dean slapped the steering wheel. "Dude! You are _totally_ harshin' my mellow."

Sam snorted, and called Bobby.

-oOo-

An electronic beep sounds as the lights click off. The antique shop is closed for the day.

Inside a glass case, a Victorian doll's eyes slowly slide open.

-o0o-

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story was written as an entry in SPN-Gen's BigBang challenge. It is posted on my LifeJournal with truly awesome art by the talented Caiti_icons. You can see it as originally intended by searching for carole-cc at LiveJournal.


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